


young blood, run like a river

by thatsparrow



Series: beau week 2019 [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 01:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: Beau throws her first punch and makes her first friend when she's five years old.--written for day one of beau week: childhood & youth





	young blood, run like a river

**Author's Note:**

> title from "raise hell" by dorothy

Beau throws her first punch and makes her first friend when she's five years old.

It goes in that order, too, though one happens much faster than the other. Beau is climbing a tree near the vineyard when she hears voices below her, not so much a conversation as one of them playing the part of verbal punching bag; the untempered edge of a child who's just learned to be cruel, like a newborn snake that lets go of all its venom in one bite. Beau's halfway down the tree when she sees the halfling girl run off crying, and she's already curving her fingers into a clumsy fist before the boy has finished turning around.

"Oh, it's _you_ —"

She's only five, and so the blow itself is an awkward, uncoordinated thing: elbow held out wide, weight sitting all over her front foot, thumb tucked inside her closed fingers where it's likely to be broken. But it does connect, at least, enough weight thrown behind it to knock the boy into the dirt, to bruise the baby-pink skin of his cheek. Good. He earned it for all the nasty things he'd said.

" _Gods_ , Beauregard—" she hadn't even heard her father come up behind her, but she knows his voice, loud and angry in her ear, "—what in Pelor's name is the matter with you? Your mother and I can't leave you alone for five minutes?" He lifts her up by the waist, arms wrapped uncomfortably tight around her midsection to keep her from wriggling free. It was a particular talent of hers: she'd think of herself as one of the fish in the stream running behind their house, all bending muscle and slippery scales. She was careful not to kick him, though — last time she'd done that, it had been a week in her room as punishment, her window shuttered from the outside. He must've guessed she was almost old enough to reach the tree branch outside her sill.

"—not just an embarrassment to your mother and myself, but to the entire family name—to my _business_." One of his rings is digging a groove under her ribs, pinching something fierce as he shifts his hold on her. "Do you ever think, Beauregard? No, of course not. And you've gone and made a mess of yourself, again—"

That much was true, at least. Beau could argue as long and as loud as she wanted that the boy had deserved it, had said such _awful_ things to that girl Rose that she'd run off crying louder than if she herself had been hit—and even setting all that aside, Beau had _barely_ touched him, had connected more with the soft side of her palm than her knuckles, anyway—but she couldn't argue against the sap stains all up and down the front of her pinafore, the splinter-sized twigs tangled into the back of her hair. Her father should've known better, though; this is what comes from putting her in dresses.

"—I'll be having a word or two with your mother about this. And what in Pelor's name are we supposed to say to his parents? Honestly, Beauregard, I'm half tempted to keep you in the house until you've learned to behave yourself."

"I'm sorry," Beau says as they're coming up to the house, tone pitched the way her father wants to hear, the shamed whimper of a puppy that's had its nose rubbed into a mess. Not that she means it, but her father's made good on that threat before, and there's only so many games of make-believe she can play alone in the wine cellars. Her nose always goes itchy from the dust and the air down there is musty, too—heavy with a rotten kind of sweetness, like an orange gone overripe, sticky and too soft.

They've made it up the front steps by now, but her father doesn't let her down until the door is closed and latched behind them, a lesson learned from another cut-short afternoon. Beau makes for the stairs as soon as her feet have touched the carpet, but before she's gone more than a few steps, her father's hand closes around her upper arm, holding her fast. He leans down over her with all the promise of safety as an oak during a summer storm, wind lashing the branches and every lightning strike threatening to shatter the trunk. She hates having to look up at him like this, face half-shadowed and stretched-out in a way that reminds her of the candlelit mask of a carved pumpkin; something with sharp teeth and a mouth wide enough to swallow her whole.

"I won't keep having this conversation with you." She's heard him use this tone with some of the hired hands, voice lowered and face pinched like he's swallowing around the unexpected taste of something sour. "If you can't learn to act appropriately then maybe you need a stricter hand. Do you, Beauregard? Or are you going to behave?"

It's only after she's nodded her head that he lets slip his hold on her, pulls himself upright and looks away with the same manner of someone who's just crushed a mosquito at the back of their neck, some fleeting irritant turned to a smear of black and blood on their skin. If the risk were not so great, if she were perhaps not so afraid, she would like to drive her toe into the soft stretch of muscle at the back of his heel, to pull off the dress that sits too tight at her shoulders and waist—if she could, she'd like to use her teeth to take it apart at its seams. She'd like to cut her hair back until it stops falling in her eyes when she's trying to climb the trees around the vineyard, to trade the thin soles of her calfskin shoes for ones sturdy enough that she can't feel the rough edges of root and rock with every step she takes. She's maybe still too young to properly articulate the feeling, but she'd like to have knuckles that cut sharp as knives, to split the skin under her father's eye and remind him that he's only human.

She'd like to, but she doesn't. Can't, yet, because she's only five years old and because her father still towers over her like the statues at the temple; right now, she doesn't know how to do anything but fear him. One day, she'll have calluses that can carve through stone, receipts in scars and twice-healed bones from lessons learned at the Cobalt Reserve, but not yet. Instead, she settles for sitting at the top of the stairs whenever her father calls her down to talk, high enough that she can see where his hair is starting to thin at the back.

 

—

 

For all her father's threats, he doesn't say anything against Beau going out the next day. Likely because he's too distracted by his business to pay her any mind than because he's attempted anything like clemency, but that doesn't much cheapen the victory to her. There's a stretch of grass not far from the house that she has eyes on today, soft enough that she can go barefoot and not so muddy that her mother would ask about the dirt between her toes. She's on her way down the slope when she catches the sound of someone calling her name, sounding too young and not reprimanding enough to be either of her parents.

"Hey, Beauregard, wait up—!"  

It's Rose, the halfling girl from the day before. She's jogging over in Beau's direction looking something determined, one hand holding up her skirt and the other hanging onto the scarf that's keeping her curls in place, only half successful as a strand of honey-red hair falls into her eyes.

"Just Beau is fine."

"Beau—sorry." There's the salmon-colored flush of sunburn across her cheeks, like she's spent the morning keeping her mother company in the vineyards. She's breathing a little heavy, too, but that doesn't stop her from offering Beau a bright smile. "Is it okay if we talk?"

Beau frowns a little, reflexive; people don't usually want to talk to her unless to tell her what she's done wrong. "Yeah, okay."

"I just, uh—" Rose blinks a little and looks away, still smiling, if shyer now. Were Beau a little older, she might understand that it's not wholly sunburn that's bringing the pink to Rose's cheeks. "I wanted to say thanks, for yesterday."

"You do?"

Rose nods, fervent. "My mom says it's wrong to hit people, she said that a _lot_ last night, but—" she looks at Beau steady now, something bright and resolute in her expression. "I wish I could be brave, like you."

Beau's got the sun shining her eyes, strong enough that she has to blink against the glare, but right now that seems tremendously unimportant. "You think I'm brave?"

"Yeah! I mean, you don't cry _ever_ , even that time you got cut bad enough that they had to call a healer." Rose's mouth twists a little. "I cry _always_."

"You wanna know a secret?"

Rose looks up, eyes wide like Beau's just promised her something of silver.

"I cried when I lost my first tooth."

"You _did_?"

She nods, smiling. "My mom says it wasn't ready to come out and now it's gonna take _forever_ to grow back." She'd spent days working at it with her tongue, wiggling it even when it wouldn't do more than shift a little back-and-forth. Eventually she'd tried to pull it out herself and that had _hurt_. "But I think I can feel the new one — you wanna see?" She opens her mouth and leans forward until Rose can see the gap along her bottom row of teeth, the bone-white tip pushing up through the gums.

"Woah."

"Yeah." Beau looks behind her at the field, then back at Rose. "I, uh, don't know if you can stay, but I was gonna go work on my cartwheels? If you wanna come, too?"

Rose's smile is like sunshine, bright enough that Beau almost feels like she has to look away from it. "Really? I don't know how to do a cartwheel—will you show me?"

"Yeah, of course."

 

—

 

"What's 'influence' mean, Beau?"

"I don't know — why?"

"My mom says you're a bad influence." They're hunting for tadpoles in the stream behind Beau's house, Rosie looking down when she says it so Beau can't see her face. "I heard her saying it to my dad last night."

Beau shifts aside another rock but it's just mud and moss underneath, spring-green strands that tickle her feet. The stream goes up to her knees here, her shoes and socks left on the bank and skirt hiked up high around her legs. She's seven, now, but still her parents have proved insistent on that front—that she look like a lady even if she doesn't act it. At least her hair is cut below her ears, even if only because she'd let it grow so knotted that her mother had no other answer but to take a pair of scissors to it. The ends itch the back of her neck, sometimes, but at least it's too short for ribbons, too short for her mother to fuss with after lacing up the back of her dress.

"That doesn't sound like a good thing, Rosie." A cluster of silver-blue minnows dart away from the space around her toes, blurred enough by the stream's current that Beau could almost mistake them for a school of fast-moving dragonflies. Last week, one had landed on her shin while she'd let her legs dry in the sun, all jewel-bright facets like some fancy brooch that'd be fashionable in Zadash—lapis for the body and crushed diamond for the wings. Even for as careful as they'd been, Rosie had still ended up with mud along the hem of her skirt; her mother had yelled at them for that, her tone going particularly sharp whenever she'd turned to Beau. "What if she says we can't be friends anymore?"

"She won't."

"She might."

"She was just mad."

"She hates me, Rosie." The summer sun's turned her skin an even darker brown than usual, hot enough to strum up beads of sweat all along her collar, but the water is still cold as snowmelt against her calves. Even so, Beau wonders how it would feel to lie back into it, face turned to the sky as the current took her downstream, following the trout to learn the path between the rocks, to swim past the places where the stones were sharp enough to cut her feet. Would anyone really miss her? How long would her parents look before dimming the lamps? Even at seven, her father has already told her that she's not the son they'd hoped for, nor much else of what they'd hoped for.

"You're going silly, Beau."

She doesn't say anything to that, turns away from Rosie to run her fingers through the minnows that have come back to the space around her shins. Doesn't look up because she doesn't know any words that are weighty enough for what she's feeling, fear sitting hot in her throat.

Rosie is her best friend. Rosie is her _only_ friend, and even managing that was more a matter of luck than anything else. Luck, that Rosie didn't see the stone-sharp set of Beau's jaw or the scrapes across her knees as something to run from the way everyone else seemed to. Rosie was the only one who hadn't looked at Beau sideways after she'd hit that boy Evan, hadn't spread the parents' whispers that Beau was some sort of changeling, something with sharp teeth her folks had found or bartered for when they couldn't children of her own. No, Rosie hadn't, and Beau doesn't know how to find someone like that again. Is there anyone left in Kamordah who hasn't already made up their mind about the Lionett's wild-eyed daughter?

They don't find any tadpoles that day, but Beau does come across a sour-looking salamander under one of the branches along the stream's edge, patterned yellow and black like a fallen autumn leaf. It freezes at first when Beau lifts up the rain-rotted wood, held fast like they won't notice the paint smudge of mustard against all the green. Silly, maybe, but then again it's not like Beau hasn't ever done the same, found comfort under her coverlet when lightning throws funny shadows against her bedroom wall. The simplest kind of childhood logic: if she can't see her problems, they can't hurt her. It holds true for the shadows that creep under her closet door, but it falls short when it comes to something like Rosie's mother, this weight hanging on Beau's shoulders that she can't touch but can feel with every step she takes, harsh like sandpaper at her skin.

Eventually the salamander takes off running through the grass, legs scuttling along the ground as it moves along the riverbank. Rosie laughs as she watches it go, makes a game of following it with their eyes as long as they can, but Beau just watches it run past the edge of the fencing and wonders what that might feel like.

 

—

 

Beau breaks her first bone and loses her best friend when she's nine years old.

 _It was an accident_ , she tells her father later, sleepy from the healing and pain still persisting all along her left arm. _It wasn't Rosie's fault, it wasn't even her_ idea—

 _Enough, Beauregard_. She's still not old enough to fight back against him, but she's getting closer. _I've spoken to the girl's mother and we've both agreed that this friendship isn't what's best for either of you_.

_She's my best friend—_

_You'll make another_.

 _I won't_ , Beau thinks, bitter-hearted and full of fury. _You_ know _I won't_. The fall happened hours ago, but it's only now that she starts crying.

 _You've had a long day. Go to sleep, and you'll feel better in the morning_.

It's not the first lie her father's told her, but maybe his least convincing. Of course she won't feel better in the morning, won't feel better for months to come. Even after the pain is a little less sharp, a wound turned to a patch of white scar tissue, it'll always be something she carries with her.

 _Yeah, I don't know_ , she'll say to Jester, a lifetime later while they're wandering through the stalls of the Pentamarket, Jester's hands full of tulips. _I've always had kind of a thing for roses._


End file.
